IDPs

Dijkman, Nathalie E. J. et al. 2014. “Sexual Violence in Burundi: Victims, Perpetrators, and the Role of Conflict.” HiCN Working Paper 172, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. http://www.hicn.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-172.pdf.

Authors: Nathalie Dijkman, Catrien Bijleveld, Philip Verwimp

Abstract:

In this paper we shed light on sexual violence in Burundi in the aftermath of its civil war. By presenting the results of a mixed-method research we discuss five topics: prevalence of sexual violence, a profile of victims, a profile of perpetrators, sexual violence’s relation to civil war and its current legal reactions and challenges. By means of multivariate regression analyses we predict women’s vulnerability to sexual- and gender based violence (GBV) in the context of war compared to everyday life. We find that age, schooling, living in an IDP camp and household wealth before the civil war have significantly different effects on GBV in both contexts. Many uniformed and armed men committed sexual violence during the war, and it appears that today ex-combatants and military continue to do so. From qualitative interviews we find several factors that connect Burundi’s past conflict to today’s violence, among which a weakened solidarity in communities and a problematic integration of excombatants in society. Impunity marks life in today’s Burundi, in particular in relation to persisting sexual violence. A thorough reconciliation or adjudication process since the civil war, as well as today’s difficulties to prosecute and pursue perpetrators, are among the main challenges for countering sexual violence in Burundi.

In a crisis-prone world, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) uprooted by both armed conflicts and environmental disasters has drastically increased and displacement risks have intensified. Despite the growing attention within global security and development agendas to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), there remain striking gaps in addressing SRHR in crisis situations, particularly among IDP women and girls. This article examines the continuum between social reproduction in times of crisis and the material and ideological conditions that restrict women’s bodily autonomy in everyday life. Using the case of the Philippines where millions of people are routinely affected by conflict and disaster-induced displacements, it argues that the failure to recognise the centrality of women’s health and bodily autonomy not only hinders the sustainable provision of care and domestic labour during and after crisis, but also fundamentally constrains how security is enacted within these spaces. Thus, the article highlights an urgent need to rethink the gendered political economy of crisis responses as a building block for stemming gendered violence and depletion of social reproductive labour at the household, state, and global levels.

The conflict in Mindanao has displaced over two million people in the period 2000 to 2009. As it subsides, the displaced return to their communities and begin the process of reconstruction. This paper studies how women contributed to the post-conflict reconstruction of Mindanao by engaging in livelihood activities. It explores five different livelihood intervention projects implemented in Mindanao between 2000 and 2010. The extent of women's contribution to post-conflict reconstruction is measured by identifying the benefits gained at household and community levels, generated by women's livelihood work. I argue that women's participation in such activities have led to economic, social and political reconstruction of the communities affected by in Mindanao. This paper also compares the women's livelihoods approach with other reconstruction strategies. It also illustrates that interventions for reconstruction therefore must include livelihood programs that encourage women's participation, as exemplified by the experience of Mindanao.

"Among the millions of Colombian IDPs one group is particularly invisible – women and girls associated with illegal armed groups. The current demobilisation process does not adequately address the consequences of the sexual violence they have suffered before, during and after conflict" (Schwitalla and Dietrich 2007, 58).

This article examines the impact of armed conflict on Kurdish women in southeastern Turkey. I conceptualize women's agency in relation to their political consciousness and capability to seek justice in legal, political, socio-economic, and cultural terms. I argue that Kurdish women's agency stems from several phenomena: their experiences with the war, displacement, and the city; their politicization as a result of their peculiar relationship with the Turkish state, based on mutual suspicion and fear; and their propinquity with the Kurdish ethno-nationalist political organization through ethnic propaganda and mobilization. I further point out the complications involved in women's resocialization and politicization in ethnicized terms, questioning the possibility for turning an ethnically-assertive and exclusive form of women's agency into an emancipatory, inclusive, democratic force.

Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Author: Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf

Abstract:

Over twenty years of civil war in predominantly Christian Southern Sudan has forced countless people from their homes. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan examines the lives of women who have forged a new community in a shantytown on the outskirts of Khartoum, the largely Muslim, heavily Arabized capital in the north of the country.

Sudanese-born anthropologist Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf delivers a rich ethnography of this squatter settlement based on personal interviews with displaced women and careful observation of the various strategies they adopt to reconstruct their lives and livelihoods. Her findings debunk the myth that these settlements are utterly abject, and instead she discovers a dynamic culture where many women play an active role in fighting for peace and social change. Abusharaf also examines the way women’s bodies are politicized by their displacement, analyzing issues such as religious conversion, marriage, and female circumcision.

An urgent dispatch from the ongoing humanitarian crisis in northeastern Africa, Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan will be essential for anyone concerned with the interrelated consequences of war, forced migration, and gender inequality.

Following displacement to State planned towns, Israeli Bedouin women lost many of their traditional agro-pastoral productive roles and became subject to stricter patriarchal confinement to their homes. Despite becoming the focus of their lifeworld, their involvement in establishing it, and their domestic gender planning and design relationships, have received little attention. In this study, roles of husbands and wives and participation in planning and designing their homes were examined in the new Bedouin town of Hura. Differences emerge between the displaced generation and the second urban generation, characterized by different ages and educational levels and varying accessibility to forbidden public spaces. This component of Bedouin women's identity and power has begun to recover, following deterioration after displacement. And yet the most significant involvement of women is restricted to the aesthetic, rather than to the physical domestic aspects of gendered relationships. Greater accessibility to hitherto forbidden public spaces has become a major source of changing internal domestic gender planning and design relationships.

The Bedouin of the Negev desert are part of Israel's internal refugee population resulting from the 1948 Israeli War of Independence/Palestinian Naqba (Abu-Rabia, 1994 and Abu-Rabia, 2002). Many of them have been twice displaced since then: first, from their traditional tribal territories and agro-pastoral subsistence economy into a militarily administered enclave, a phase that lasted until the mid-1960s, and second, since then, about half of the rapidly growing population into State planned towns. This process of settling in town after displacement has been extensively studied from a variety of cultural social economic and political perspectives (Meir, 1997 and Ben-David, 2004). One of its sub-processes is the novel experience of urban permanent home building, a most fundamental and critical one in striking roots in the new environment. Yet, despite receiving some attention (Ben-David, 1992 and Ben-David, 1993) and the recent spurt in research on Bedouin women, no attention whatsoever has been paid to the house project as a highly intensive arena of gendered relationships. In particular, research on Bedouin women misses here one of their most intimate spatial areas of experience within a patriarchal social setting, second only, perhaps, to the self and body. We refer to their unique need to both conceptually and physically reconstruct their homes, as well as their identities within them, amidst the deep socio-cultural crisis following forced relocation.

This paper is thus concerned with the gender dynamics of Bedouin husbands and wives in the process of domestic planning and design within the new semi-urban environment. The questions addressed refer to the process of gendered power relationships within the patriarchal household following displacement, how an understanding of improved women's access to other social and economic resources helps placing this process in context, and whether it is capable of empowering women externally within the Bedouin community at large.

Sexual violence is an issue of significant concern in conflict-affected societies, with girls often among those most affected. While formal support services such as medical care, psychosocial support, and legal assistance for survivors are undeniably important, informal actors also play a key but poorly understood role in assisting survivors. This study examines the experiences of young female survivors of sexual violence in northern Uganda in order to explore the variety of roles (both positive and negative) that informal support networks played in contributing to survivors’ healing and recovery. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 female survivors of sexual violence between the ages of 13–17 who were living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Lira, northern Uganda. Each girl participated in a series of 4 interviews over a 1-year period. Girls participating in this study identified social stigma to be the primary source of psychosocial distress following an incident of sexual violence, as well as the most significant barrier to their recovery and reintegration. Findings also suggest that the relationship between a girl and her perpetrator had a significant impact on the type of follow-up support she received—particularly with regard to her ability to access justice. Survivor accounts also indicate that family members played a complex role in girls’ lives following an incident of abuse—in some cases providing significant support, while in others exposing girls to additional stigma or marginalization. Findings offer important insights to inform the development of response initiatives that build upon community-based networks, while also strengthening linkages between formal and informal forms of support in the lives of survivors.

This article aims to contribute to an increased understanding of the importance of migration in humanitarian and ‘post-humanitarian’ contexts, by exploring the interlinkages between protection and displacement. It argues that the strategies by which conflict-displaced populations protect themselves are largely based on mobility. Yet, humanitarian approaches to displaced populations do not take sufficient account of the mobility needs of those they assist. Furthermore, the actual location at which aid is provided is affected by funding realities and donor priorities. This article discusses the case of protracted displacement realities of Somali refugees and internally displaced people in Kenya, Somaliland and south-central Somalia. Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with humanitarian aid workers and displaced people, the article offers an analysis of the recent ‘stabilization discourse’ that fuels programming directed at the return of displaced Somalis. The authors argue that humanitarian protection is compromised by immobile aid practices and by humanitarian programmes that are guided by states’ interest in refugee return.

The literature on evidence-based action in humanitarian crises commonly focuses on how inter-and non-governmental organisations can produce better knowledge and how this can be translated into improved programming. Yet, there is little recorded experience of, or concern about, how the beneficiaries of humanitarian relief can produce and use knowledge of their predicament. This paper is based on a case study of how the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas, an internally displaced women's organisation in northern Colombia, employs proactively research-generated data to advance its own agenda in its interactions with donor bodies and the government. The paper finds that beneficiaries of humanitarian aid can, and do, use participatory research to advance their own ends in the legal and political spaces created around humanitarian crisis. However, their agency is limited by poverty, violence, and local balances of power. The paper concludes that beneficiaries' priorities in the production of data about humanitarian crises warrant further study.